


A History of Hunger

by draculard



Category: Ravenous (1999)
Genre: Cannibalism, Famine - Freeform, Graphic Description of Corpses, M/M, Maggots, Starvation, hunger strikes, mentioned death
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-12-10
Updated: 2020-12-10
Packaged: 2021-03-10 00:53:47
Rating: Mature
Warnings: Graphic Depictions Of Violence
Chapters: 1
Words: 411
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/27995589
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/draculard/pseuds/draculard
Summary: Come say hi on tumblr, I’m draculard there too
Relationships: John Boyd/Ives
Kudos: 10





	A History of Hunger

**Author's Note:**

> Come say hi on tumblr, I’m draculard there too

In pre-Christian Ireland, a man lies on his neighbor's doorstep and waits to be fed. He fasts over a perceived wrong — the exact offense is lost to time, or perhaps irrelevant to start with — and dares his neighbor to feed him. There's no greater sign of indecency than to allow a man to fast to death on one's own homestead, and yet his neighbor does it, and steps over his emaciated corpse, the stomach bloating in the sun, when hunger takes him.

Years later, in a different time and place — an asylum that reeks of human excrement and open sores — a man is strapped to his bed. White sheets keep his wasted limbs from fighting back; the men who hold him down outweigh him by a hundred pounds apiece. They force his jaw open easily; they snake a tube down his throat, tearing his esophagus and making his nasal passage burn, and then when he thinks the pain is at its apex, they funnel freezing cold milk straight down into his stomach and watch him shiver. He doesn't die of hunger, precisely; he dies of heart failure the next day.

In a mountain passage over Colorado, a man goes forth into the blizzard with homemade snowshoes, too weak to hunt, too close to death to stay at the camp. He promises to bring back food for his family; he stumbles to a halt and removes his clothes less than a mile from the cave they've turned into a shelter. Hypothermia takes him faster than it should; the snow buries him. He weighs only ninety-five pounds.

In the ditches of an island nation beset by cold rains and harsh winds, the corpses of children lie side by side. Their skin is blackened from exposure; their bellies are swollen, their limbs raw to the bone; the first stage of myiasis is setting in. If they were less rotten, perhaps some of the starving men walking past would stop and take them elsewhere, not to bury, but to strip the flesh and see what could be salvaged.

A million people die by starvation. Some do it willingly; others inevitably succumb.

Here and now, Ives leans forward and claims Boyd's lips, their teeth clashing, the taste of Boyd's skin on his tongue. His fingers tangle in Boyd's hair, holding him close even as he fights, refusing to let him slip away.

Ives bites his lip, draws blood.

He refuses to let hunger take him, too.


End file.
